The concepts herein relate to an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material. The concepts herein in particular are applicable as a support for carrying out diagnoses in the health, clinical and environmental fields, in all cases in which samples of microbiological materials are to be analysed, and in particular bacteriological material.
As is known, in bacteriological laboratories testing is carried out which, in combination with other evidence obtained from further tests which can be carried out in other laboratories too, combine to convince a doctor of the presence of any infective agent afflicting a patient or which is in a different examination site such as a surface of an environment to be analysed; the final aim of the diagnosis is to lead to prescription, where required, of an adequate therapy, especially of an antibiotic nature, with the aim of neutralizing the pathogen agent identified by the analyses carried out. The microbiologist and the laboratory team, in practice, starting from one or more samples collected from a same examination site, carry out a series of tests, in general following the laboratory guidelines, which often originate from guidelines set down by the Health Ministry or the corporations defining the norms and standards of Good Laboratory Practice.
It is also known that a microbiologist's work method requires an “investigative” approach, characterised by a non-linear process during the course of which outcomes of a series of examinations are obtained in times that can be variable from test to test, the outcomes providing various evidence; and all the preceding is done in a diachronic timescale: for one or more samples collected from a same investigative site various methods made the results available over a timescale that can go from a few minutes to a few days. In particular bacterial cultures can be long in incubation before enabling conclusions to be drawn in relation to the presence or not of bacterial strains in the collected sample. The microbiologist therefore has an iterative approach, as it is often necessary to “re-read” the elements already evaluated previously in the light of new elements to be considered, and vice versa. At present the main method used in bacteriology is the bacterial culture, carried out on media that enable growth, contained in Petri dishes or capsules, following a period of incubation, of bacteria which might afflict a patient and which are present in a biological sample originating from the patient him or herself, such as for example urine, swabs (carried out in one or more anatomical sites), faeces, CSF liquid, respiratory material, etc.
The sample can come from a patient, an animal, or a surface, in cases of applications respectively in the veterinary sector or the environmental sector.
As well as bacterial culture, other methods are known and used in the bacteriological sector, one of the most important of which is Gram-staining, generally carried out on suitable slides, which together with the microscope viewing also provides further evidence on the nature of the pathogen. Other tests used are biochemical in nature and provide further information on the type of pathogen and its belonging to determined classes or families of micro-organisms. In recent years sometimes molecular biology methods are also used, based on DNA and RNA analyses, with the aim of identifying with certainty the presence of a given pathogen, though the cost and specificity of these methods mean that they are used in support of the ones previously described, which are still the most widely-used, as they are less specific and less expensive and complex to perform.
The above-described processes for microbiological analyses are therefore long, complex and difficult to manage, due to the heterogeneity of the tests to be conducted, the iterativity required in the analysis of the single results, and the absence of automated systems for carrying out the laboratory testing and the analysis of the results, which complicate the process of obtaining the correct diagnosis, starting from the interpretation of the single examinations carried out.
Further drawbacks of the known methods are the inefficiency and the lack of unity of the overall process, and the risk of errors in passing information, also due to the lack of a correct consideration of all the information which must contribute to the correct determination of the diagnosis, which are not all contemporaneously accessible to a same subject. Further, the existing systems do not enable sufficient traceability of the whole process carried out and the historical aspect relating to the analyses performed, the devices used and the subjects involved, thus missing a source of information that might be very important in some specific contexts.
The culture dishes themselves are a perishable entity since after some days of incubation the flora normally present in each sample tends to overgrow and “cover” the colonies of the pathogen agent for which identification is sought.
The majority of the work processes performed in the bacteriological laboratory are usually done manually, and only some are done semi-automatically. Recently automatic culture plate-seeding systems have appeared on the market, which have introduced the concept of automation in bacteriology with a consequent standardization of the processes and a greater traceability with respect to manual operations. Digital recording systems of the images of the culture dishes before and after specific incubation periods have also been introduced, together with automated systems of movement of the dishes themselves by conveyor belt. Also known are LIS (Laboratory Information Systems), in which the essential information relating to each patient are collected, such as personal details, which are generally associated to the further data deriving from outcomes of analyses carried out or medical evidence. These systems too, however, enable only marginally obviating those drawbacks mentioned herein above, since these systems are able to transmit only strings of data and not actual information in real-life form, such as for example images.
In certain instances, the concepts herein obviate one or more of the problems encountered in the prior art.
In certain instances, the concepts herein enable eliminating or at least significantly reducing risk of human error in identifying samples to be analysed, in carrying out analytical procedures and/or in determining results thereof.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which enable significantly increasing the reliability and the quality of the diagnostic process, and therefore also the safety of the patients.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which enable a more rapid, accurate and traced decision on the part of the laboratory doctor concerning the diagnosis.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which exhibit a high degree of reliability.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which are very flexible and adaptable to various operative requirements.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which enable simplification and acceleration of treatment and retrieving processes of the data relating the sample analysis.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which provide a high traceability of the historical data relating to the analyses carried out and the devices and subjects involved, so as to enable further studies and statistics to be made on the results themselves.
In certain instances, the concepts herein provide an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material which are simple to realise and which involve sufficiently low costs.
These aims and others besides, which will emerge more fully during the course of the following description, are substantially attained by an apparatus and a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material, according to what is set down in one or more of the accompanying claims, taken alone or in combination with one another, or in any combination with one or more of the further aspects described in the following.
Each of the aspects described in the following can further be taken alone or in any combination with the other described aspects, and further also in combination with any one of the claims of the application or with any combination of the claims.
In certain instances, the concepts herein relate to an apparatus for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material in which a first software program is configured so as to retrieve, analyse and visualize the data and relative images of the first and second supports relatively to a plurality of patients.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to an apparatus for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material in which a first software program is configured so as to enable entering comments, symbols and/or graphic signs together with the images, and/or memorising the position of the comments, symbols and/or signs with respect to the images, in order to enable signalling and tracing indications on which the bio-active agents (for example isolated bacterial colonies grown on a culture dish) on which to carry out further tests.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relates to a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material in which a first image and/or a second image are retrieved from at least a first memory and/or directly from at least an image-acquiring device.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material, wherein a first user interface comprises a plurality of displays or visualization of interface images or screen pages alternatingly representable on the viewing device and reciprocally connected and available directly or indirectly, and the method comprises steps of visualizing the first image, or the first plurality of images, and the second image, or the second plurality of images, in a same interface screen page, or in interface screen pages visualized alternatingly and in succession on the viewing device, and reciprocally mutually connected and available directly or indirectly.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material in which the first biological sample and the second biological sample correspond to one another and originate from a same original sample taken from the first examination site.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of biological material comprising a step of further viewing in the user interface further metadata associated to the first image, or to the first plurality of images of the first support and/or associated to the second image or second plurality of images of the second support.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treating diagnostic information relating to samples of micro-biological material further comprising steps of entering and storing further diagnostic data deriving from a combined use and evaluation of the first image, or of the first plurality of images, of the first support, and/or of the second image, or the second plurality of images, of the second support.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treating diagnostic information relating to samples of micro-biological material further comprising steps of carrying out the analysis of the first image with the aim of evaluating at least the entity and type of the bio-activity of the sample by evaluation of the detected bacteriological growth, by analysis by an operator or by an automatic image interpreting system.
In a further aspect, the concepts hereinfurther relate to a method for treating diagnostic information relating to samples of micro-biological material further comprising steps of retrieving data, from a data system or laboratory information system, and processing and visualizing the data and the relative images of the first and second supports relative to a plurality of patients.
In certain instances, the concepts herein further relate to a method for treating diagnostic information relating to samples of micro-biological material further comprising a step of exchanging data, comprising at least data relating to the first examination site and/or the images relating to samples of micro-biological material, and/or diagnostic data deriving from the combined analysis of the images, between an apparatus for treatment of diagnostic information relating to samples of microbiological material and a laboratory information system.